There were two guards- politeía, she thought- standing at the entrance to the dungeon. The Spur, as the others in the group kept calling it.

Her first impression was that it looked like a giant piece of copper ore. A two-story lump of stone, mixed with blue and green and brown, with a lumpy, melted look, sticking out of the ground as if dropped by an angry giant.

"The dungeon grows them," had been the explanation when she asked. "Sometimes it moves."

There was a very human-looking door bored through one side, and that was what the politeía were guarding; two youngsters with bored postures and little interest in their jobs.

The five of them took a moment to tap their rings against an iron disc set into the wall, and that was it, they were allowed in. No questioning, barely even a look from the guards. Tap your rings, good to go.

Jump-touch did wish they'd set the plate a little lower, though. It was at head height for everyone else in the team except Yaris, and she almost had to jump to reach it.

The closest experience she had to this was going to the Dip, and even there, in a place where all were welcome to shelter, the Guardian in charge would at least come have a word with you.

"If it's that dangerous in here, shouldn't they be doing a better job at guarding?" Jump-touch whispered to Shrike as they passed through the doorway. Inside, it was dark and cramped, the edges of the room taken up with supplies and the centre given over to an ornate spiral staircase, wrapped around a central pillar of stone.

For some reason it headed up as well as down, but then terminated at the ceiling, and there were dusty boxes and bags stored on the upper steps.

"What do you think's gonna happen?" Eim said, looking back, already on the stairs, "there hasn't been a dungeon break in almost a decade, and the first level is almost completely tamed."

"It's tamed here," Yaris's voice echoed from somewhere ahead of him, "if we head a day's walk in any direction then it's going to be much less so."

Eim said nothing in response, and Jump-touch watched Shrike deal with the stairs instead. It didn't look comfortable.

The stairs were solid stone, each one growing out of the wall, with a polished, solid stone handrail on one side. The walls and central column, now that she looked closer, were streaked with veins of ore, and the kobold part of her found them oddly fascinating.

She reached up, running her hands over them as the group descended. They seemed to give off a light, and what should have been a pitch-black descent was instead merely dim.

"Where does the light come from?" she asked.

"It's Dungeon Magic," Shrike answered, interrupting Eim, who had been about to say something. "It only covers the first two floors though, below that it's pitch black. It also may not last if we go too far out. The tamer the area of the dungeon is, the brighter the lights."

He took a step badly, and the metal cap on the end of his cane scraped against the stone.

Ollie huffed, heading back and walking one step in front of them. Backwards.

"Do you need help?"

Shrike shook his head, "the heal earlier helped, I can make it down on my own. It's just a transience."

"But should you have to?" Ollie protested, "you're a mage, you're our mage. You make sure that you don't use up all your magic on the first firebolt, or whatever you do, shouldn't we make sure you don't use up all your gumption getting to the fight?"

Shrike shot them a look, and Ollie shrugged, "look, I just don't want to have to carry you out of here, covered in infected slime bites, after Yaris has gotten fed up and stormed off."

"Slimes don't have teeth, they have a small sack inside of them filled with diges-"

"Oh Stone help me," they turned around and skipped down the next two steps, almost bumping into Yaris, who was having to avoid knocking her head on the ceiling, "I only wanted to help, I don't need a lecture!"

Somebody laughed, and they continued downwards together.

****

The bottom of the stairs came upon them all of a sudden, the grey-brown wall opening into a wide archway, beyond which was...

"Wow," Jump-touch paused on the last step. There was more light here, shed from thick streaks of white stone set high up in the ceiling above. Did we really descend that far?

She had thought they were going to be walking through little tunnels, like... Like a giant mole or rabbit would dig. Instead, what stretched before them was what she could only describe as a cavern. Lit from above, thick, copper-brown mosses and grass covered the floor, and in the distance, she could see the trees, not much bigger than those high up on the Mountain.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

They even had a sort of wind-worn look to them that was achingly familiar, but as she looked closer, she saw that there were veins of copper rippling up the trunks.

The whole place had an air of early summer to it, the colours of the Valley at the end of the March, when all the fruit was still on the trees and the leaves had yet to fall.

"It's so-" she lacked a word in Resper. The word she wanted meant 'The glint of something shiny that catches the eye, that a kobold has to pull their gaze away from before they lose themselves to the greed.'

But it didn't translate well, and her boon wasn't providing.

She said it anyway, drawing out the word to show she meant it, ignoring whatever looks the humans were giving her. She was a kobold, her book even said so now, and she wouldn't be ashamed of it. She spoke two languages, not one.

"Interesting reaction," Ollie span around, walking outwards, arms above their head. "It's so nice and warm down here!"

It was warm, they were right, the air still and stuffy. I guess it makes sense, there's no wind underground.

A thought struck her, as the others walked past her and out into the cave.

"Is this… Is this everywhere?"

"The dungeon?"

"Yeah."

"Most places." Yaris sighed for some reason, "come on. The orchard we need to clear is quite far."

They started walking together, Yaris up front and Shrike at the back with Jump-touch.

"Is the reward good at least?" Eim asked Yaris, and the two of them started talking about coins. She wasn't interested in coins.

Beside her, Shrike winced as he took a step wrong, and she realised she could see tiny beads of sweat on his forehead.

I should tell him.

But he said I didn't have to. He almost said I shouldn't.

But you're holding back an important thing from the group, that's Greed. He's hurting himself.

Jump-touch bit her lip, her attention caught for a moment as Ollie whistled sweetly at something Yaris had said.

"I-" she started, but Shrike reached over, nudging her in the side.

"I'm fine," something in his voice indicating that he probably wasn't fine. Why did humans do this! Why couldn't they just say what they meant!

"But-"

He shook his head again, and she sighed, shoving her hands into the pockets of her itchy wool trousers.

"Just let him be," Eim turned to her from up ahead, "if he wants help, he'll ask us for it."

Yaris looked back too, scrunching up her forehead. A moment later Shrike was in her arms, shouting and trying to hit her with the cane.

"Put me down you animal!"

"You're slowing us down," she said as she nodded to Ollie, who swept in, stealing the cane mid-swing. "There. Now we can either leave you here to sulk while Ollie beats monsters to death with your walking stick," she moved her head out of the way of a half-hearted punch, "or you can give up and let us help."

"No, I am an adult, I am perfectly capable, you can't-"

"I have put all of my points into Brawn, you nerdy little rat. I can do what I want, and what I want is to reach the Orchard before we all die of old age. Now-" she dodged another punch, resorting to holding him with one arm and trying to catch his flailing limbs with the other, "-stop trying to hit me!"

Jump-touch split her focus between watching Yaris and Shrike and staring around at the cavern.

For all its beauty she thought, it's a dead place.

There was no bird-song, no insects. There was no wind. The trees were so still they looked like sculptures, and she suspected if she touched one of the leaves it would be hard as metal. She could see the way the copper wormed its way up into them through the floor; infecting each leaf, one vein at a time. The only thing truly alive down here seemed to be the patches of moss and grass layering the floor.

Her new shoes were chafing at her ankles, and before she'd thought about it, they were stored in her Heart, and her toes were sinking into the damp moss. It was springy beneath her, and she took a moment to enjoy it, before catching up with the others. Much better, she could already feel the heat of the blisters against the ankles and the backs of her heels, but she'd suffered much worse in the past.

As she reached the others, she found that Shrike had stopped complaining, instead sitting sullenly in Yaris's arms, his arms crossed. She felt a bit sorry for him, but they were making much better pace, maybe double or triple what they had been before.

It was up to you to put your shame aside and do what was best for the group. Pride was a good thing to have, it motivated you to do better, but there was no need to hold onto it to the detriment of the rest of your village.

She should talk to him about it later, she was a mediator after all.

****

Their destination, when they finally reached it, appeared at first glance to be a ruined building. Once a grand structure, all that was left now were walls, with tops like jagged teeth.

"The dungeon does this," Eim said as they walked through a half-collapsed arch. "It likes to imitate old temples more than anything else, but you can find all sorts of buildings if you look. But don't be fooled, this was never a real place, it was built like this, as a ruin."

She stared around as they reached the other side of the arch. She had expected a stone floor on the inside, bits of furniture and collapsed roof, but instead what greeted them was an oasis. A garden of trees and plants, each one more alive than anything else she'd seen in the dungeon so far.

"The guild found this a couple of months back," Yaris set the sullen Shrike down and motioned to Ollie to give him his cane back.

"The apples that grow here have been shown to speed up natural healing, but the slimes which also live here will overwhelm it if they're not culled every now and again. We're lucky they found it so early, and if the slimes are kept in check, it might provide for at least a couple more years."

"They think they can stop it being re-absorbed that long?" Shrike asked from the floor, his natural curiosity overwhelming his shame at being carried.

"That's what Harmony said, when I requested the chit."

"The higher-ups are super excited about this place," Eim said, stretching, "they're thinking about stationing team seventeen here permanently."

"Huh." Yaris gestured for Jump-touch to walk closer. "Okay. Here's the deal. We're here to kill Slimes, they're a small monster, you'll see some around if you look. The little pink ones are almost harmless. Then there's green ones, which will mess you up if you don't put your shoes back on; call out to us if you see one. The last type is a Blue Slime, and if you see a one of those, then you're to shout and keep away from it, okay? They're dangerous."

Jump-touch nodded. She could do that. How dangerous, though?

"Ok," Yaris looked around, "give Ollie the spear from your storage, I have my own way of storing weapons. Eim, I'll get you your hammer in a moment."

Yaris glanced over the group as she called a sword into her hand, and as Ollie took the spear from Jump-touch with a nod.

"Shrike, any final suggestions?"

He shook his head, leaning hard against the ruined wall and twirling the cane in one hand. "I'll do what I can from over here, if you need me somewhere else then shout."

Yaris grunted. "Ok, here we go."